Ecard storm brews up less than happy 4th of July – Sophos
The e-mails, which are being seen in inboxes worldwide, claim that the recipient has been sent an ecard greeting by a friend, and tells the user to click on a link to view the card.
Subject lines used in the malicious spam campaign include:
America the Beautiful; God Bless America; Happy Fourth of July; Independence Day Celebration July 4th; Fireworks Show Your Nation’s Birthday.
"Cyber criminals easily take advantage of celebrations like the 4th July to infect innocent people's computers, and potentially steal their identities. This is not just an American problem – these kinds of attacks strike around the world, and are designed to abuse PCs on a global scale," says Brett Myroff, CEO of master Sophos distributor, NetXactics.
People regularly send e-greetings to friends and colleagues, so it is important to guard against these attacks and ensure computers are properly protected.
Clicking on the link contained inside the e-mail, which is in the form of a numeric IP address, takes surfers to a compromised zombie computer hosting the JSecard-A Trojan horse. This malware then tries to download additional code from the Internet which Sophos intercepts as Mal/Dorf-C.
Rather than being sent to a real ecard Web site when clicking on the link, users are visiting someone else's compromised computer which is hosting malicious code designed to infect a Windows PC. These same computers, based all around the world, are responsible for spreading spam.
A real ecard company is unlikely to send e-mails containing links that are a set of four numbers in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. “That should set alarm bells ringing instantly,” Myroff adds.
Sophos recommends that companies automatically update their corporate virus protection, and run a consolidated solution at the e-mail gateway to defend against malware, spyware, hackers and spam.
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